Saturday turned into a big circle drive – see the highlighted ‘loop’ below.
We started out in Fortuna and made our way to Ferndale to walk amongst the Victorian storefronts on Main Street and to get a feel for this city. Ferndale contains dozens of well-preserved Victorian storefronts and homes.
Ferndale, sometimes referred to as “Cream City”, is known for well-preserved Victorian store-fronts on main street and homes throughout the community, which are also known as “Butterfat Palaces,” due to their construction wherein considerable wealth was generated in the dairy industry. Many of these buildings date from the 1880s.
We also ventured into the Ferndale Museum that has various exhibits and artifacts documenting the community.
This included an old switchboard – Pacific Telephone toll board and various telephone devices. All we needed was Lilly Tomlin to be sitting in front of it!
One of the permanent displays includes a seismograph. This was placed in the building 1962 after a long use at UC Berkeley and has been maintained every since. It continues to operate and record earthquakes from all over the world and the device is serviced on a weekly basis – changing the recording paper and oiling the device.
After walking around Ferndale, we decided to head towards Cape Mendocino. This area of the coast is the westernmost point on the coast of California. The road wound through the forests up and over a couple of coastal mountains and in areas had been washed out. So not such a good road. 
As we topped one rise and could see the ocean, the clouds were beautiful as they came in the valley.
The coastline in this area was wind swept and without any improvements as this part of the coast seems to have been forgotten.
A travel magazine has called this area “too lovely to be believed, perhaps too beautiful to last.” It has been recognized as the top “still wild” place in California. The area is the only significant stretch of California without a shoreline highway, and so far has “thus escaped tourism’s aggressive paws.”
Close to the coastline is which is a small town with the claim to fame as the site of the first oil well drilled in California. Not much else there – unless you consider all the area where I’m certain marijuana is grown. Further along the loop road we took was the even small town of Honeydew.
After a quick pit stop, we continued on our travels through more redwoods and beautiful coastal countryside. The only downfall of this overall loop was the road conditions – constantly running into areas where the road has washed out, been destroyed by earth movement and generally it sucked.
I will never forget the moment I saw Honeydew fro the first time. My boyfriend and I were heading north and decided to see if we could stay along the coast rather than turning inland. We climbed the twisty, curvy road and the came over a rise to look down into the greenest, most beautiful valley I have ever seen. It could have been Ireland, it was so lush.
Later that afternoon we got stuck on an old logging road, and spent the night in the car, smack in the middle of the road, with the pond and frogs slightly below the running board. We were worried about logging trucks coming along, but luckily none did!
I can see that – the road hasn’t changed much.